Yad Vashem honors people, who during the Holocaust helped Jewish citizens to survive and emigrate, as so called “Righteous among the nations.” In Cooperation with the Johannes Kepler University Linz and with academic support under the supervision of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Michael John, an exhibition was designed, which shows the time of the National Socialism in Austria and the persecution of the Jewish population to the point of the Holocaust. At the center of the exhibition are Austrians, who risked their lives to prevent Jewish fellow citizens from annihilation by the NS-henchmen. Yad Vashem awards these life-savers with the honorary title “Righteous among the nations.”

The Leon Zelman Prize 2015 goes to Robert Streibel, a historian and the principal of the adult education center Hietzing. The award is endowed with 5.000 Euros and is sponsored by the city of Vienna. The award will be presented by Vienna's Executive Councilor for Culture Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, at Vienna’s City Hall on Monday June 8.

In the late 19th century, a German-Jewish emigrant to the USA changed the world. With Emil Berliner’s invention of the gramophone and the record, the age of mass entertainment had found its first medium. The first global culture spanning the world was born.

Kurz: “Step up for democracy and tolerance with the utmost consistency”

Today on this 27th of January the liberation of the concentration and death camp Auschwitz has its 70th anniversary. “The name Auschwitz is a symbol for the incredible and unparalleled crime of the Shoa. At the same time Auschwitz is a warning to where anti-Semitism, racism, fanaticism and exclusion eventually lead to” says the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz on today’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Today we commemorate millions of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. We commemorate and are aware of our obligation to draw the right consequences for our actions today”, Kurz underlined.

“We must step up with the utmost consistency for the values of our pluralistic society, for democracy and tolerance and we must resolutely oppose inhuman tendencies in politics and society”, says Kurz. “This means: A definite No to any form of anti-Semitism; No, to exclusion and discrimination: No, to all violations of human rights!”

“If we want to do justice to the memory of the victims of the past, we must together fight for a society in which human dignity is universally respected”, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration emphasised. Thereby Kurz called to mind Austria’s internal and external commitment like in the framework of the National Action Plan Integration, in international fora like the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the UN as well as a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

The Jewish Museum Vienna invites visitors to a commemoration of the Shoah at 5PM on Tuesday, January 27, at Dorotheergasse 11. The Museum is also a place of remembrance, with collections and objects that recall the Holocaust. We will observe a minute of silence and relate the story behind selected objects. A resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly made January 27 the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Free admission at 5PM.

After the Vienna city walls were dismantled, the buildings on the stately boulevard that was constructed in its place around the inner city became status symbols for the nobility and grande bourgeoisie. Many Jewish industrialists and bankers, who had contributed to the economic boom in the Gründerzeit and were active as collectors and patrons of the arts, built magnificent residences on the Ring. In contrast to the splendor of the Ringstrasse façades, social problems and increasing political radicalization emerged as a concomitant to the massive economic and social changes in Vienna in the late 19th century. The lower middle classes were the classic losers in this modernization process and were thus highly receptive to politically incited anti-Semitism, which did not stop at exploiting stereotypes such as the “poor ragged Ostjude,” the “socialist Jewish firebrand,” or the “capitalist Jewish banker.” The exhibition looks at the light and dark sides of the Ringstrasse era, the social rise of a small Jewish elite, the daily struggle for survival of the masses of Jews, and the political exploitation of anti-Semitism and its consequences.

Six artists from Russia and Austria investigate objects from the twentieth century from two collections in Moscow and Vienna. Through artistic research and dialogue with the curators of the collections, they identify objects as a launching pad for new projects and artworks.

The two collections contain objects recounting suppressed or marginalized stories: the Jewish Museum Vienna, founded in 1988, which focuses on the Jewish history of Vienna and Austria, and Memorial Moscow, founded in 1990, whose archive contains objects relating to the history of political repression and violations of human rights in the USSR. The aim of the artistic research is to investigate the background to the objects, whose physical appearance today might be misleading but whose origins on closer inspection reveal a very different story.

An exhibition by the Jewish Museum Vienna, the Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow and Memorial Moscow